The Impact of Hardware Specifications on Reaching Quantum Advantage in the Fault Tolerant Regime

Abstract

We investigate how hardware specifications can impact the final run time and the required number of physical qubits to achieve a quantum advantage in the fault tolerant regime. Within a particular time frame, both the code cycle time and the number of achievable physical qubits may vary by orders of magnitude between different quantum hardware designs. We start with logical resource requirements corresponding to a quantum advantage for a particular chemistry application, simulating the FeMoco molecule, and explore to what extent slower code cycle times can be mitigated by using additional qubits. We show that in certain situations architectures with considerably slower code cycle times will still be able to reach desirable run times, provided enough physical qubits are available. We utilize various space and time optimization strategies that have been previously considered within the field of error-correcting surface codes. In particular, we compare two distinct methods of parallelization, Game of Surface Code's Units, and AutoCCZ factories, both of which enable one to incrementally speed up the computation until the reaction limited rate is reached. Finally we calculate the number of physical qubits which would be required to break the 256 bit elliptic curve encryption of keys in the Bitcoin network, within the small available time frame in which it would actually pose a threat to do so. It would require approximately 317 million physical qubits to break the encryption within one hour using the surface code, a code cycle time of 1 $\mu s$, a reaction time of 10 $\mu s$, and physical gate error of $10^{-3}$. To break the encryption instead within one day it would require 13 million physical qubits.

22 pages, 4 figures

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